


Arashi ("Storm"): A NOIR fic

by wyback



Category: Noir (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/F, Femslash, Romance, post-anime series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyback/pseuds/wyback
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years apart, Kirika returns to Paris and to Mireille.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: "NOIR" and its characters are the property of Bee Train and its creators. I'm just taking them for a strictly non-profit, fair use spin. The only thing that's mine is this story and any original characters in it, if any.  
> Spoilers: Just to be safe, everything NOIR (the anime).  
> Author's Notes:  
> Thanks to xxmadlaxx, who introduced me to NOIR and beta'd this fic. Thanks to sav8801/savior 8801 for encouragement and French phrases (I don't speak French).

**1:  NUMBERS**

 

Numbers were important to Yumuura Kirika.  So much of her life revolved around numbers - rooms, floors, streets, dates, hours and minutes, the when and where of locations and targets, deadlines, specifications, coordinates, ever-changing minutiae.  

Then there were the numbers that were the constants in her strange and varied life. _Eight_ bullets in her M1934 Beretta - seven in the magazine and one chambered at all times. _Forty_ meters, the distance she could shoot with scrupulous accuracy.  Beyond that it was always a gamble, no matter how good she was. _One_ shot, seven to go – a part of her was always keeping track – then _six_ , _five_ , _four_... _three_ was beyond gambling, while relying on less was pure, simple recklessness. 

_You’re reckless._ Who had said that? 

‘A woman,’ the thought floated into Kirika’s head. A woman’s exasperated voice. Beyond that, the words were disembodied, refusing identification. Like so many of the other things in her life, the voice was a nebulous memory. 

Unlike numbers. Numbers were firm, solid, immutable…dependable. Even when they were made-up. 

Like _fifteen_ , her supposed age when she had sent an email to a hard-bitten, blonde, blue-eyed assassin.  _Make a pilgrimage to the past with me_ , the young Kirika had typed, hardly knowing what she herself had meant.  That led to twenty-three hours on the first transatlantic flight that she could remember taking, and a new life.  

The memory of that time was as clear to Kirika as if it had happened yesterday. How surprised she’d been when Mireille leaned back and closed her eyes as soon as the plane took off from Tokyo.  

_‘How can she sleep_? _’_ the slight Japanese girl had wondered.  ‘ _She was nearly killed a few hours ago. She barely knows me, and she knows what I can do. How can she leave herself open like that_? _’_ Was her new companion that confident? Or, it had to be considered, dangerously stupid? _  
_

“Stop staring and get some rest,”the blond woman grumbled without even bothering to look at her.“I don’t think they’ll do something insane like attack us on an international flight, but there are no guarantees once we land.” No need to clarify who “they” were. _  
_

And Kirika, recognizing it as sound advice, had tried. But except for a few minutes’ snatches she simply could not. With the result that once they’d arrived in Mireille’s flat almost twenty-four hours later, it was all she could do to crawl into the woman’s bed and sleep like the dead.  Had she even asked permission? ** _  
_**

But the morning after was clear to her, and what it felt like to wake for the first time next to another, as far as Kirika could remember anyway. _How peaceful she looks._   The lost girl found herself basking in the warmth of the woman beside her, and her steady, tranquil breathing.  

_‘How can an assassin rest so easily?’_ Kirika marveled. For there was no question that the sophisticated young woman was as deadly as she was; she had killed those men in the construction site easily. There was a lack of hesitation, an absence of reluctance to take a human life that marked their kind. Kirika was willing to bet that Mireille wouldn’t have a single nightmare over the deaths they’d left behind in Japan. 

It was then that Kirika realized that this was part of what she wanted one day, something as mundane as to be able to sleep, untroubled, for hours. Though like Mireille, she could wake as fast as a striking snake if she had to. _  
_

And she had found a kind of serenity, gradually.  By Mireille’s side, Kirika had learned that many things were possible. Life outside a strange and sinister destiny was possible. Two girls could enter the deadliest of traps, survive and win the right to their lives, on their own terms.

All because Mireille had thrown a lifetime’s worth of imbued caution away, set aside the revenge she was richly entitled to, and ignored all of her assassin’s instincts in order to save the girl who had destroyed her life and her family. 

Mireille Bouquet was a wonder to Kirika. 

Which is why Kirika couldn’t say no when Mireille sent her away. 

_More than two years, almost three._ It had been that longsince she had set foot in Paris, last stood at the window of this, her first true home. 

Now that memory was clear and sharp, nothing nebulous about it at all... 

_It was an ordinary day, much like any other until they were having tea and Mireille began to speak. “There’s a boarding school that accepts international students in Lyon. I sent them your school records, with some alterations of course. They’ve accepted you.” She made the announcement laconically, in the same tones she used to talk about the weather.  
_

_Kirika looked up, confused. She made what for her had been a natural assumption back then. “Who’s the target?”  
_

_The normally imperturbable woman sputtered into her tea and laughed. “No! No target. It’s not a mission. It’s just a school.”  
_

_“But why?”  Why Lyon, why so far away, why tell me just now?  
_

_“Because we can finally afford it, and things are quiet. You have to finish school sometime.”_

Just like that. 

She had gone without a fight, though everything in her had wanted to stay. Why?  Because Mireille could quote Hemingway and make cryptic references to Dostoevsky and  Alice in Wonderland, and other things that Kirika didn’t have the slightest understanding of.  Even poor, deluded Chloe had known some of those things. 

And Kirika had done well. A girl who was used to learning things quickly to save her life or to take someone else’s could do wonders in a normal school setting. Not enough to take top honors of course – Kirika had missed out on too much for that, half the time she was playing catch-up – but enough to be considered bright, with a promising future ahead of her.  

Mireille was pleased with that, and came down to see her graduate, and to take Kirika home. Finally. 

And now, at last, she was back in Paris. 

“Home,” Kirika whispered. Lyon was beautiful, but this was where she belonged. She opened the window and breathed in the familiar air, reveling in the ambient noise of a typical day in this crowded city and the warmth of the sun bathing the skin of her arms. Whatever her origins, life with Mireille had turned part of her into a true Parisienne, with a knowledge of the city few could match. 

She fetched a glass and watered the plant by the window. A contented smile pulled at her lips. For as long as she could remember, Mireille had always kept a plant right here. Somewhere along the way Kirika had taken charge of it, just like she usually made the tea. 

Then she caught the sound of familiar footsteps, the click of a key turning a lock and the door shoved open in just _that_ way.  Funny how something so simple could make her heart flutter. 

“I’ve got our lunch,” Mireille announced from the doorway.  

“I’ll set the table,” Kirika said, turning away from the view.  For the first time in nearly three years, she felt utterly at peace.

 


	2. Home

**2:  HOME**

 

“Pass me the knife, please?” 

Kirika picked up the small dinner knife and flipped it expertly before handing it to Mireille, handle-first. “What?” she asked, as the blonde grinned at her in amusement. 

“I guess some things don’t change,” was the only answer she got. 

“Have I changed a lot?” Kirika asked curiously. 

“Some.” Unwilling to go into detail, Mireille left it at that. The true answer lay somewhere between the way the blonde assassin’s eyes had widened at the taller, more assured, though still very young, woman that had stepped up to receive her diploma yesterday, and the way her heart hadn’t quite gone back to its settled pace during the entire ride back. 

“You grew a couple of inches,” she added lamely. “The Provencal air must agree with you.  I like what you did with your hair.” 

Kirika blushed. “It was something we did after exams. Jacqui’s aunt owns a salon, and she insisted on treating us for graduation.” She fingered the edges of her short hair, a touch sleeker and more sophisticated than the longish pageboy she’d worn before.  

Mireille paused in her slicing, imagining Kirika with friends and giggling over a haircut. _Would wonders never cease?_ “It suits you.”  

That garnered a smile, and suddenly it was as if no time had passed at all. Lunch was laid-back and, to Kirika, beautifully mundane, just the two of them talking about simple things over freshly baked bread, cold cuts and twirls of pasta cooked _al dente_.   

Until Mireille asked in a deceptively casual voice, “What do you think about returning to Japan for college? Tokyo University is trying to attract foreign students or at least students with foreign backgrounds. With your French schooling, they’d probably jump at the chance to have you.” 

Kirika’s hand tightened on her cup. “Mireille...”  

“There might even be a chance for a scholarship. You’d have to take an exam though -” 

“Mireille!”  They both started as the normally placid voice cut through the air like a knife. Kirika struggled to maintain some semblance of composure. “Can we please stop pretending?” 

“What do you mean, pretending?” The blonde looked up, her eyes cool and inscrutable. 

Kirika hesitated. The years away at school had brought some changes. Compared to the quiet enigma she’d been before, she was practically sociable now. But talking to Mireille, contradicting her, actually arguing with her...there were too many undertones for that to ever be easy.  

_Too many debts that Kirika was conscious of never being able to repay._ “I’m glad I finished school. But since I got back, you’ve been treating me like that’s all I am – a student who just graduated. You used to tell me everything. What’s bothering you now?” she asked. “Do we have a new job, a target? Tell me his name, how do we get to him, who’s the client?” 

“Kirika!” Mireille’s disapproval was cutting. 

It made the girl pause. Under any other circumstance, it might have made her stop. But two years in another part of France almost 500 kilometers away was one thing; returning to Japan across God knew how many oceans was another. “No matter how we both want it to be otherwise, the truth is I’m a killer. You, above all people, know that.” 

“It’s not like I’d forget,” the blonde said curtly.  

The smaller girl fell silent but inside she was reeling. _What had happened while she was gone? Why was Mireille acting this way?_ “Is that...is that what this is about? Have you decided...?” 

“I haven’t decided anything!” Mireille exclaimed. “I was simply asking where you wanted to continue your studies. God, is that a crime?” 

“But why Tokyo? Even high school, why Lyon and not here? You sent me away and I thought...I kept waiting for you to come and visit or to send for me in the summer. But you never did.” It was the closest Kirika came to an accusation. 

“I was busy,” Mireille said in tones of studied indifference. Then, as if realizing how harsh that sounded, she relented and continued in a more conciliatory tone. “Kirika, I know it’s not exactly easy, getting away from our old lives and building a new one that doesn’t involve killing, but we should try, right? Besides, didn’t you enjoy school, meeting new people and making new friends?”  

The girl nodded. 

“Then there really isn’t anything to complain about, is there?” 

“There is.  You know there is.” Kirika looked at the blond assassin almost challengingly, though her voice remained quiet, almost pained.  “Why are you doing this? If – if you want to get rid of me then,” she swallowed, “all you have to do is say so.  Just say the word and I’ll go.” 

Uncharacteristically, the older woman refused to meet her eyes. “Is that what you want?” she asked.  

“You never asked me what I wanted before.” 

A hint of the usual impatience. “I’m asking now.” 

_Now or never._ Funny how Kirika could kill dozens with a steady hand, and now she was practically quaking inside.  “What I want...” she stumbled over words so little used by her, “what I’ve always wanted, is to stay here in Paris. With you.” 

“Kirika...” 

“You can send me away, but no place will be safer than here. We both know that to some people I’ll always be nothing more than a weapon.” 

“But it doesn’t have to be that way!” Mireille remonstrated, and there was real anger in her voice. “You’re young, Kirika, you’ve got a chance.  You can go to university, graduate, find a proper job.  You can be your own person and move away from this life.” 

“You mean...away from you.” 

Mireille toyed with her fork. Her eyes staunchly catalogued the leftovers on her plate. “It has to be that way, doesn’t it?  No matter what we do, for as long as we stay together, the Soldats will see only Noir.” 

“We are Noir,” Kirika reminded her softly. “Even if in the end we refused to give in, in their eyes, we passed the trials and completed the ritual. The Soldats are everywhere. Going to Japan won’t help. The first time they came after us was there, remember?” Suddenly a chilling possibility occurred to her. “While I was away, did they come after you?” 

“Kirika...” 

“Just answer me, please. Did they?” she asked nervously. 

“Once,” Mireille confirmed with reluctance. There was a suspiciously self-satisfied gleam in her eyes as she continued, “But I took care of it and the orders for sanction were... rescinded.” That was the problem with the Soldats. Their leaders had forgotten that they were no longer amorphous, mysterious entities. She’d taken a good look at the men who’d silently waited as they’d emerged wounded and bloody from Altena’s mad ritual. Men with faces could be tracked down, reasoned with, and reminded of their mortality. Kirika and she would have some peace for awhile. 

“I wasn’t here.” The girl sounded stricken. 

“I took care of myself for a long time before you came along,” the proud Corsican snapped. “I may not be as good as you -” 

“It has nothing to do with that!” Kirika clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking.  

“Then what?” 

“If something did happen, and I wasn’t there...” Just the thought made her quail. “How could I live with myself, Mireille?  Your own mother told me to protect you -” 

“Before you shot her.” 

Kirika rocked back with the unexpected blow.  “Yes.”  She bent her head. “I can’t – I can’t atone for that, I know. But I can try.” 

“By being with me?” Mireille asked stiffly.  “I don’t need a protector. I’m an assassin on my own terms, a damned good one. I –” 

“You,” Kirika interrupted quietly, “you don’t need anyone. But Mireille, I need you.” 

It was the one thing she could’ve said against which Mireille had no defense. The woman sighed, completely disarmed.  “It’s not that at all. I’m not – I should know better,” she said, “but when it comes to you...” 

Kirika waited, her silence betraying none of the turmoil she felt within. 

Mireille sat back, picked up a napkin and wiped her mouth. “Well, if you’re staying, you get to make the tea.” 

And that, finally, brought a smile.

 


	3. Kirika

**3:  KIRIKA**

 

Kirika was being tested. Or at least that’s how it felt.

The day was warm and Mireille, still flushed from her errands, decided to take a shower while Kirika prepared their tea. When she finished, she returned to the table in house clothes, which for Mireille meant a half-buttoned, white long-sleeved man’s shirt that barely covered her thighs, and not much else.

The girl glanced covertly at Mireille. Roughly half of her was hidden behind the day’s newspaper. A lone drop of water slid from her damp hair, making its way down the hollow of the slim, white throat. When it slipped beneath the vee of the thin shirt, Kirika swallowed.

Still preoccupied with the paper, the older assassin didn’t notice how the girl’s right hand balled into a fist over her tea fork. She was fighting the urge to _reach over_ , and trace the path of that droplet of water...

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Sorry?” Kirika looked up, blushing a little at being caught unawares. She felt herself being appraised by frank blue eyes.

The paper rustled as Mireille put it down.  “It’s Sunday, which means the Left Bank is closed to traffic,” she clarified. “It seems to be cooling down. It might be nice, and we haven’t gone in awhile.” 

Kirika couldn’t say “yes” fast enough, and her obvious enthusiasm made Mireille grin.  


* * *

 

Mireille lifted her face to the cool breeze that blew along the Seine. The river smelled good today. She laughed as the wind messed with her long blonde hair. She ran a hand through her tousled locks and tried unsuccessfully to put them back in some order.

Along with many residents, she loved the fact that the normally busy Left Bank was closed on Sundays, leaving pedestrians, cyclists and joggers to reclaim the riverbank.

She hadn’t been down here in awhile. It had been different before. When they weren’t on a job or running for their lives, Kirika and she had taken many walks around the city. They had wandered down the cobbled streets of Montmarte, leaned on the thick, pale-stoned balustrades of the bridges crossing the Seine, and made their way to the Musee d’Orsay.

During their first time at the museum, Mireille had taken Kirika to the café on the top floor, and grinned at the way the normally taciturn assassin’s eyes turned wide at the sight of the huge metal clock built into a transparent section of the wall. They took the table next to it, and for the first time Kirika willingly sat with her back to a door as her avid gaze took in the view of the river below, and Montmarte and Sacre Coeur beyond.

The walks began as a way to help Kirika become familiar with the city.  It continued because it gave the two of them some semblance of normalcy, even if they never really dropped their guard.

In the end, Mireille had grown to look forward to the long, quiet walks. Sometimes they shopped. When the weather was kind, they would find a place to sit along the riverbank. While she reclined to enjoy the sun or watch the water, Kirika would bring out her sketchpad.  

It wasn’t that Kirika had been eager to resume drawing, not after she’d tossed her first sketchpad in the Seine. But one day Mireille had simply bought her another pad as well as colors, and several mornings later Kirika had slipped them quietly into her bag.

_Who was he, the man who had inspired Kirika to draw?_ Mireille had never asked, had only warned the girl in freezing tones that she should stop seeing him. And Kirika, not understanding, had refused to accede to her for the first time.

If she could’ve only explained. Part of it was concern, because Mireille had already learned the hard way the pitfalls of drawing people, who had no idea of the shadowy underworld that permeated the city, into her life. She had wanted to spare the girl that. As to what other reasons there might be for her anger at the sudden emergence of a new relationship in Kirika’s life, Mireille had deliberately tried not to look into that too deeply.

She started as fingers brushed tentatively against her hand.

“ _T'as l'air songeuse_.“ Kirika wondered what kind of thoughts could produce such a pensive expression on Mireille’s face.

Mireille shook her head and gave her a little smile. Though they still mostly spoke together in English, Kirika was much more at ease with French after her time in Lyon. “There’s nothing on my mind. I guess I just missed this.”

The girl nodded in agreement. “They did this in Lyon too, closed the section next to the river. Only there it’s closed all the time, not just on Sundays. I wanted to show it to you, and the old city,” she said quietly.

Mireille heard the unspoken words. _But you never came._ Even the trip to fetch Kirika had been quick, just a matter of getting to her school on time and returning to Paris right after. Lightly, she took the hand that was placed a careful half-inch away from her own. “Maybe you still can. I haven’t visited Lyon in years. I’d like to see more of it. And now I’ve got a proper guide,” she found herself teasing, though she wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. There were reasons why she’d stayed away. Good reasons.

But for now the bright, pleased expression on Kirika’s face was more than worth it.  


* * *

 

Was it possible for an assassin to be blissfully happy? Over something as simple as an ordinary afternoon?

Because that’s how Kirika felt. After their brief exchange, Mireille had made to pull her hand away. But Kirika had resisted, and with a rare, indulgent smile, she had allowed it.

They spent the rest of their walk mostly hand in hand or with arms twined loosely together. They stayed out till near-dusk without a specific destination, except to buy supper at a small brasserie where the owners greeted Mireille by name.

Then Mireille had gone to take a nap, leaving Kirika to tidy their purchases and her things, which were still half-unpacked from yesterday. When she’d finished, she found herself gazing reflectively at the city outside, and the purple and deep blues of a deepening sky.

_I didn’t imagine it._ If Kirika had had any doubts about her feelings, this glorious day had put them to rest. She was in love. Had probably been in love, for years, with Mireille.

That it had taken her so long to put a name to these feelings…

The Soldats must’ve taken her when she was very young, because Kirika didn’t remember anything about a family at all. There were only scattered memories of the manor where she and Chloe had been trained by Altena and her “sisters.” In all that time, Altena had spoken of love in only one way -

_If love can kill people, then surely hatred can save them.  
_

Kirika wanted to be able to hate her, wanted to blame everything that she’d become on Altena. But Altena too had been shaped by the pitiless ways of the world. Altena was a child when war enveloped her city, a weary child with sunken eyes who was frightened by the smoking ruins of her neighborhood and the loss of her parents. A soldier had noticed the lost-looking girl and taken her by the hand. Then he took her to a broken-down room, closed the door, propped his gun against the wall, and used her to pleasure his body for hours. By the time he stopped and left, something in her was as dead as the bodies scattered outside.

Mireille’s fate was different. Like Kirika and Chloe, she too had been chosen. The third sapling was the eldest and only daughter of the family who had ruled Corsica in alliance with the Soldats. But in the end the Bouquets had loved their daughter enough to refuse to surrender her for training. They had paid the price for it.  And as much as Mireille had suffered in the lonely, cautious exile that followed, still that sacrifice had left her free to live her life and find her own way.

Unlike Kirika, who often felt as if she were only a player in her own life. There was an empty space inside of her, a dead void where nothing could reach or touch her. There was no harm, hurt or regret there, but there was also nothing else.  She couldn’t pinpoint when that began to change, when she began to realize that Mireille made her happy in ways she couldn’t explain.    

Then Chloe appeared and gave her back part of her memory…and Kirika found out that she was the one Mireille had been hunting for all these years. She was the assassin who’d executed the Bouquets for defying the Soldats. She had executed the father first, the mother last.

It was those moments with Mireille’s mother that haunted Kirika most. Mireille looked so much like her mother. In the blur of Kirika’s nightmares, sometimes the face under the dark bullet hole wasn’t so much Odette’s as her daughter’s, and it was Mireille’s face that would stare at her in hatred and accusation as a horrified Kirika watched her die.

So when Mireille had turned and kissed her one night, each measured touch signaling forgiveness and something more infinitely tender, it was too much. Kirika had burst into tears. What she felt for Mireille was something she couldn’t explain to herself back then, much less to the woman whose lips were so soft on hers. Before that night, she hadn’t even known that her feelings for Mireille included desire. Kirika had never wanted anyone so badly in her life, had not realized that her body could ache for someone this way.

But she was not, and would never be, worthy of Mireille. 

Only months later, in Lyon, did Kirika come to understand that there were words for these confusing feelings. To any other girl, it would’ve been an easy assumption. To Kirika it was practically a blinding revelation.

It was, of all things, a class discussion on poetry that sparked insight. Kirika wasn’t exactly impressed with literature as a whole, though she tried to pay attention because Mireille liked these things. Still, she didn’t see the point. Factual accounts were one thing; information was always useful. But Kirika saw no use for fanciful stories, much less for poetry. When she’d first been made to understand what poems were, she could hardly believe that people indulged in something so…impractical.

On that early morning, the teacher had made them read a sonnet by a man named Neruda, and Kirika found herself wandering the halls afterwards. Lost in thought, she quietly repeated the words to herself.

> "I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz  
>  or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:  
>  I love you as certain dark things are loved,  
>  secretly, between the shadow and the soul."

Like a spell, the words carried her away, and in that moment she was no longer in a corridor surrounded by noisy teenage girls, but back in Paris, watching Mireille place a new potted plant next to the window.

_“I found it,” Mireille had said, in a voice that was strangely calm and tense at the same time.  
_

_Kirika had raised her head inquiringly.  
_

_“Your letter,” the blonde added. She was fussing over the plant, and her back was to the girl.  
_

_“Oh.” Nervously, Kirika cast around for something to say. Give her a gun or a knife or even a fork and it was like a natural extension of her hand. Words though, writing that letter to Mireille had been one of the hardest things Kirika could remember doing. “I meant it.”_

Only she wasn’t exactly sure, back then, what she’d meant.

With Neruda’s sonnet running through her head, suddenly she understood. It wasn’t that Kirika hadn’t heard of love. She knew the word, had read about it and watched some of the shows on TV. It’s just that the concept had never been a part of her personal equation. There was survival, death, duty and purpose, and brief moments of fulfillment. But love? It didn’t apply to her or her life.

Until someone had shown her. Until one night in the pouring rain, when the one woman in the world who had every right to kill her, refused to. Till then, Kirika had not known that she could be forgiven, or that there were emotions more powerful than duty or vengeance. Or that death would be preferable, easier in a way, than living with a forgiveness one did not deserve.

That stormy night had led to Kirika’s first taste of regret so deep, it would last the rest of her life. Because nothing she did now or later could possibly make up for what she had taken from Mireille. From this moment on, she would have to live with who she was, and the sins she had committed against the person she cared for above all others.

Armed with this new revelation, Kirika had barely resisted the powerful urge to leave on the next train to Paris. She had wanted to run to Mireille, to tell her, “I have the words now. I know what I meant in the letter, and what I felt that night.”

But of course she hadn’t, though the knowledge of her feelings burned in her heart. She could only wait, and excel at the task Mireille had set for her.  

_And now?_ Now that she was home again and with Mireille, she was tongue-tied. Worse, it seemed there were plans to send her away again!

Kirika stared with unseeing eyes at the world outside. _“I love you,”_ she whispered, “ _as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul…_ ” 

_In Lyon, there was an instance when Mireille’s cool composure had slipped._ It was in the moment when they’d first laid eyes on each other. Kirika, dressed in her uniform of white blouse, dark skirt, blazer and tie, had been quietly waiting to take her into the school. She’d barely caught the startled flash on Mireille’s face before she was swallowed up in how her own heart raced.

Because Mireille had changed too in the years they’d been apart. She was firmly in her twenties now, and there was an aura of self-assurance about her that showed in everything from the relaxed sophistication of her clothes to the way she stood and squarely met Kirika’s gaze. She looked like a woman who was ready to take on the world, and why not? After all, she had pulled off a feat no one else had thought possible. The sapling once considered the weakest among the Noir candidates had stood up to the Soldats, turned Altena’s plans to ashes, and reclaimed Kirika. Together they had survived the ultimate test.

_So how_ _could Mireille even think that they were best apart? How could she doubt that they stood strongest back to back?_

In frustration, Kirika walked away from the window and to the full-length mirror in another corner of the room. She stared at her reflection. The first time she’d looked into this mirror, she’d been a thin, rather unremarkable Japanese girl of fifteen or sixteen who barely knew anything outside the science of killing, and felt almost nothing.  _A perfect sapling_ , Altena had called her. The perfect future half of Noir.

And now? Maybe not so perfect in that way. Kirika hadn’t killed in years, though she’d kept her skills honed to a sharp readiness. But the biggest changes weren’t physical. Something inside her was coming alive, and it showed in her eyes. They were attentive, engaged. The intense focus that had been with her all her life was shifting – from killing to having, from an existence steeped in death to something passionately alive.

_Since that night when Mireille had kissed her..._

“Mireille.” The name slipped from Kirika as softly as a wish. _If she were here right now, looking at me with that knowing smile, if she reached for me…_   Kirika was startled by how her reflection in the mirror came alive in an instant, how her eyes brightened and her mouth curved. A flush suffused her cheeks, and her stance shifted as if already anticipating the arc of Mireille’s body against her own.

_I won’t go quietly this time_. Mireille was part of her darkness and her salvation and worthy or not, Kirika would not lose her again, not without a fight. She had fought for many things before and she had been a proficient weapon, but it had always been for others. This time it would be different. This was for herself and what she wanted.

And what she wanted was to put that startled, almost helpless look on Mireille’s face again. For those piercing blue eyes to focus and see only her, even for just awhile.  

Kirika planned her next steps as thoroughly as if she were dealing death.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The verse Kirika quotes is from an English translation of Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII."


	4. Mireille

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that this is a femslash fic, and that it's rated "M" for a reason.

**4:  MIREILLE**

 

The rains began while Mireille slept. The heavens opened and enveloped all of Paris in a quick but violent storm. 

Mireille woke with a start as a terrific blast of thunder shook the room.  A window flew open, banging hard against the frame. The dark sky beyond showed that the easy afternoon spent with Kirika had turned into a stormy evening. 

She rubbed her eyes sleepily as a sporadic arc of lightning threw everything into silhouette.  She knew, even without looking, that Kirika was not in bed with her. 

_Unlike that other night._    
 _  
_

* * *

Almost three years ago - three nights before she’d sent Kirika away - there had been a storm just like this, the violent kind that shook Paris sometimes, and she had woken to Kirika embracing her tightly, her dark head buried in Mireille’s shoulder. 

In retrospect, it had been strange. They had fought in conditions such as this. They had run on slippery, treacherous rooftops while shooting at masked men and dodging bullets in the hard, driving rain. Why should Kirika be shaken now, when they were indoors and safe? 

But she undoubtedly was. Mireille’s arm wrapped around the shivering form. Her hand trailed upwards until it was running soothingly through short, silky tresses. “What’s wrong?” 

Kirika’s answer was the briefest of whispers. “ _Arashi_.” 

“The storm? But...” Mireille checked herself. Kirika rarely spoke Japanese to her, knowing that her familiarity with the language was limited. That in itself hinted at some inner turmoil. Surely this wasn’t the time to remind her that they’d been through worse.  “It’s okay. It’ll stop soon.” 

“Not this storm. The – the other one. I was dreaming. I was on the roof, and then running through the cemetery and you were...I was telling you to…” In the dark, the woman could sense Kirika lifting her head, craning her neck to look up at her. 

How could Mireille forget the soft words etched into her brain from that bloody night? “ _We had a promise, didn’t we? That you would kill me when it all became clear…please do it.”_   

Mireille shivered, remembering the way Kirika had closed her eyes and the serene acceptance on her face as she waited for her to shoot. Mireille turned so that even in the half-dark she could look into those deep brown eyes. “It’s over.” 

She could not explain what happened next. They had slept together in the same bed dozens of times before. Maybe it was the embrace and the storm, the memories that lay thick between them, and everything they had been through in the past year. Or maybe it was the way Kirika was shivering, how she seemed so badly in need of comfort. 

For whatever reason, Mireille craned her head just enough to kiss the girl who trembled in her arms. 

She could be forgiven for thinking that it was the right thing to do. Kirika’s lean arms tightened around her even as she opened her mouth in a whimper, and Mireille, emboldened, took advantage of the invitation.  

The blond woman found out quickly that she could become addicted to this, the little sounds and shivers that wracked the perfect assassin’s lithe body as her mouth left those intriguing lips to begin charting the rest of her. The taste of Kirika’s mouth, her skin, the way her body was wiry-hard and yieldingly soft in just the right places... Mireille was soon frantic to know every inch of her.  

Then Kirika’s shoulders were bare, and Mireille’s lips were on her collarbone, left hand on the tight bud of a small, firm breast under threadbare cotton, starting to press, when another flash of lighting illuminated the girl’s face. 

She was in tears. 

The hot blood pounding in Mireille’s head turned to ashes.  _What am I doing?_   Hands and lips withdrew quickly as she stammered, “Sorry, I – ” She couldn’t go on.  Shakily, she got to her feet. She walked barefoot to the windows and stared out at the pouring rain. 

She felt, rather than saw, Kirika stumbling from the bed. “No, Mireille, don’t stop. It’s just…I owe you so much...” 

The words hit Mireille like a blow. She took a swift breath against the unexpected pain. In that second, she knew two things: she loved Kirika, and because she did, Kirika could not stay.  Mireille didn’t trust herself that much.  

“No, it’s okay,” she managed somehow. “Let’s just go back to sleep.” 

The next day, she began making arrangements for Kirika to complete her schooling in Lyon. 

It took her months to get used to sleeping in the same bed alone.  
  


* * *

 

Now Kirika was here again and it was frighteningly easy, letting things slip back into having the girl with her.  Mireille had lived alone for a long time, and she liked it that way. But for some reason having Kirika around made the small flat more of a home instead of the other way around. 

She sighed. It had been excruciatingly hard to send Kirika away the last time. She wasn’t sure she could do it again, even if it might be the right thing to do. 

There was a scuff in the darkness. Quick as lightning, the cold polymer-and-steel of Mireille’s Walther was in her hand and pointed steadily in the direction of the noise. 

“It’s just me.” 

“Kirika?” Mireille lowered the pistol, automatically decocking the striker as she put it away. “What…?” Her eyes widened as the shadows resolved into a lissome figure that seemed to be dripping water. 

“I wanted to get some wine for dinner. I got caught in the rain.” The girl stepped into a wayward beam of light as she placed the bottle down. She was soaked, and everything she wore clung to her like a second skin. 

The sight of her made Mireille’s throat run dry. “You went out in that,” she waved towards the pouring rain visible through the window, “just to get a bottle of wine?” The phrase “ _are you crazy?_ ” hung in the air between them. “And why are you in your uniform?” 

“It wasn’t raining when I left,” Kirika answered readily, “and my other clothes are in the laundry.”  Eyes steadily returning Mireille’s skeptical stare, she shrugged off her blazer. 

Every inch of Kirika was wet from the rain, and underneath the blazer her white, sodden blouse was a sheer veil molded to every curve of her body. She slowly pulled at the knot of her tie, loosening it but not taking it off completely. When she caught Mireille’s reflexive swallow, it took all of her discipline not to smile.  _So she likes that._

“You must be cold,” Mireille managed to say. For the life of her, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The body revealed as much as covered by the drenched clothes was no longer the spare, almost painfully thin form of a girl forced to live an ascetic life, but a healthy young woman’s.  “You shouldn’t stay in those clothes. Why don’t you change and take a shower?” 

“Alright,” Kirika agreed softly. She approached the bed, hands flicking first one and then another button open on her blouse, though the tie still hung askew from her collar. She climbed on the bed until she was practically straddling the half-seated Mireille, her skirt riding high as her knees bent and braced on each side of the woman’s outstretched legs. Her heart was beating hard in her chest. _Was she right about this? Would she succeed?_

Kirika leaned forward until her tie was dangling inches away from the slim hand that had just pointed a gun at her. “Will you help me?” 

Mireille was a woman hypnotized. Gaze riveted on the young assassin’s face, she found herself wrapping her hand in the proffered tie. Gradually, but with increasing force, she pulled the girl forward until they were a handbreadth apart. “You’re playing with fire.” Her warning was a hoarse whisper in the dark. 

Kirika was staring at the lips inches away from her own. She knew it was the only warning she was going to get. _God, so close now._ “I want to.” 

“Show me.” Mireille wasn’t sure if her rough words were a demand or a plea. 

Kirika swallowed nervously. This wasn’t in the plan. She had offered; in her mind this was the part where Mireille should either take or refuse. Instead she seemed to be waiting.  

_What was she expecting? A kiss?_ But except for a sudden kiss stolen by Chloe and the achingly brief exchange with Mireille that had resulted in her exile, Kirika wasn't too proud to admit her inexperience. An assassin did not employ a technique she wasn’t familiar with, not for something as vital as this. So she took Mireille’s words literally instead. 

Holding Mireille’s gaze, she loosened the remaining buttons of her blouse open until only three were left. She shivered as a breeze from the half-open window found her drenched skin. She was wearing a bra, but she knew that the thin, damp material would hide nothing of her reaction to the rain and to Mireille’s proximity. 

Intense cerulean eyes watched her every move. They traced her face and the slim column of her neck like a physical touch, followed her movements until they were riveted on the increasingly bare expanse of skin. “Kirika...” Another warning. 

“Mireille, please.” Eyes the color of molten chocolate beseeched her. 

The two simple words broke her resistance. Mireille surged forward and pulled hard on the tie that was still in her hand. Kirika nearly fell against her, surprised by the force of it. But in the flash of a second Mireille’s other hand was in her hair, cupping the back of her neck and holding them both in balance as her lips claimed Kirika’s hungrily. 

It started hard. Mireille was too experienced an assassin and a woman not to realize that this was an ambush. She was angry at being caught unawares and being pushed like this, and frankly more than a little embarrassed. Obviously Kirika was aware of her attraction and had decided to act on it. ‘ _But why like this?’_ she couldn’t help thinking. Why the hell couldn’t they approach this like two normal, sane people? 

Then it didn’t matter anymore, because she was murmuring Kirika’s name against those impossibly soft, uptilted lips, and Kirika’s hands were almost painfully tight on her arms as she hung on for balance and maybe for sanity as well. The way Kirika returned her kiss was so open and so giving that it was impossible to stay angry. Mireille’s grasp fell from the mangled tie. 

Kirika was learning that there were things no extent of planning could account for. Like the intensity of her response to Mireille’s touch – it was as if someone had flipped a switch and a million new nerve centers she hadn’t even known existed were cascading all over her.  She shivered as the possessive caress of Mireille’s mouth found her throat and began to suck on the skin. “Oh.” 

“ _Mon trésor_.” Mireille was almost light-headed. Was this really happening? It had been years since she had touched anyone, and for it to be Kirika, the only one who really mattered... With a hint of apology, she returned for a gentler kiss, lips moving to tease and caress, a tongue flicking out to taste and ask permission. 

Kirika’s heart pounded at the endearment. _Didn’t she know_ _that I can’t refuse her anything?_ Specially not now. The way Mireille held her, strongly but carefully, fair hands sliding down her body to touch but also to support – this wasn’t just about desire.  And Kirika wanted so badly for this to be so much more. 

So she did as Mireille asked, feeling silly and a little chagrined that she didn’t know how to do this properly. But that lasted for the three seconds it took for Mireille’s lips to claim hers again, and then there were more important things to concentrate on. 

Mireille’s tongue danced lightly across lips and teeth to explore the warmth of Kirika’s mouth. When Kirika’s tongue peeked out to meet hers in a shy dance, she broke away with a gasp. “Maybe we should…” 

Kirika twined her hands in the golden tresses of Mireille’s hair and drew her back. “I want more,” she demanded, raining kisses on that beautiful face. 

“But –” 

“I dare you.” 

Blue eyes flashed. With a near-growl, Mireille moved from her seated position until she too was partly kneeling on the bed, with legs bent beneath her. She pulled Kirika closer until the girl was straddling her more firmly, and shoved impatiently at the short skirt until there was nothing between Kirika’s center and the tensile strength of fair-skinned thighs except a slip of silk. 

She grinned at Kirika’s sudden intake of breath…only to groan a moment later as small, strong hands tugged urgently at the buttons of the shirt she’d worn to bed. They slipped nimbly into the newly created opening to span, tentative but impatient, against the warm flesh of her stomach. 

_I’m in so much trouble._ A few minutes more of this and there would be no turning back.

Kirika was warm and open in her arms, and Mireille was drowning in sensation as the girl clung to her.  When a palm and fingers, roughened by years of unrelenting training, shyly found the curve of her left breast, she frantically led the kiss deeper. 

In the end it was only the need for air that forced Mireille to cede the contact.  She opened her eyes, and read in an instant the desire on Kirika’s face...and the guilt. 

Always guilt.   _Bordel de merde!_

With an effort, she broke away and scrambled to the edge of the bed. 

“Mireille, what…?” Kirika was looking at her with an expression that was still heavy-lidded with desire. 

“Button your shirt.” The heavy disappointment turned Mireille’s voice ice-cold. She clenched her fists against the urge to continue. Still beguilingly and messily half-clothed, Kirika was only inches away, and so very hard to resist. _  
_

“But why?” It was almost a cry. The rejection, coming on the heels of a display of passion from Mireille that Kirika had hardly dared dreamed about, was almost more than she could bear. 

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Mireille ground out, as anger and disappointment surged. Once more Kirika was offering her what she wanted, but for all the wrong reasons. And in this case, she cared enough for the reasons to be important, dammit! 

“Why are you doing this, Kirika?” she demanded. “Because you owe me?” Pain turned to resentment and she lashed out. “Every time I look into your eyes all I see is guilt.  I’m sick of it!” 

“No!” Kirika denied instantly. How could she think that? “But what I did to you…oh Mireille, I killed your family. And when you came to take me from Altena, I tried to kill you!” The doubts that had been haunting her for years swelled inside her and burst out into words. “How can you forgive me?” 

_So it was guilt._ When Mireille spoke again, the anger in her voice was a dull, tired throb.  “You said it yourself. We are Noir. You’ve washed your hands in blood, as have I. Neither of us is an innocent, Kirika. Shall we count off debts and payments?” she scoffed. “The shots that killed my family staked against the number of times you saved me? It doesn’t work that way. This is life and it’s messy, our lives especially. There’s no balance sheet where things conveniently add up.” 

Kirika was incredulous. They had both killed, yes, but couldn’t Mireille see the difference?  “You make it sound so simple, but we both know I can never atone…” 

“Enough!” Mireille cut her off as Kirika found herself being grabbed roughly by the shoulders until she was staring into two furiously blazing eyes. “God help me, if you’re here, half-naked on my bed, for any reason other than the fact that you want to fuck, and especially if it’s because of some misbegotten sense of guilt or gratitude, I **will** strangle you!” 

“Mireille?” The dark-haired girl stared at her, wide-eyed. 

“Forget it.” Abruptly the hands let her go. “Go take your shower, Kirika.” In a second Mireille was off the bed and moving to stalk away. 

Kirika quickly caught the hem of the woman’s long-sleeved shirt, effectively stopping her. “I  didn’t approach you tonight to...fuck.” The word felt alien in her mouth.  She didn’t swear much, not even at the people who tried to kill her, and strangely enough she had never associated that word with what she wanted from Mireille. But this, she was beginning to understand, could not be done without words. 

Mireille stiffened. “Then –” 

“What I want is to...love you. I've missed you so much.” Even in the dark it was easy to see that Kirika was trembling. “If you'll let me, and before you tell me to leave again, I want this. But it’s also okay if all you want is to f-“  She stopped as a finger briefly touched her lips, silencing her more effectively than a dozen gunshots ringing in the dark. 

“Don’t say that,” Mireille admonished. She sighed. “I mean, don’t just say things like that.“ _Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, because it might just kill me if this is the guilt talking, too._  “Fucking is…” she was about to say easier, safer. Only fucking had never described what she wanted with Kirika “…complicated enough. But love? Haven’t you learned by now that love is the most dangerous thing in the world?” 

For a second, Kirika’s thoughts flew to Chloe and the man she’d met by the Seine, both destroyed by what they’d felt for her.  But this was Mireille, and no one was better prepared for the risks that they faced. So she answered as honestly as she could. “It’s too late.  Your warning,” she clarified with a wan smile, “it’s a couple of years too late.” 

Mireille sighed. “Kirika…” At this distance it was impossible not to touch her, and her hands curved to tenderly cup the girl’s face. _Absolutely, deeply in trouble._ “I won’t tell you to leave again. I can’t.” Even to her ears, it sounded dangerously like a confession. “But we can’t keep going on like this. I was hoping we could leave it alone, that in time things would go back to the way they were before…” 

“Before Chloe returned my memories,” Kirika continued softly. 

Mireille nodded. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Maybe we should settle this tonight.” 

“How?” 

Suddenly the eyes locking with Kirika’s were as sharp as blades of ice. “Tell me how my family died.”

 


	5. Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've had a bad day, this is probably not the chapter for you right now. Return when there are rainbows. Also, that "canon-typical violence" tag? That shows up a lot here and in the succeeding chapter/s. Keep in mind that this is a Noir fic.

**5:  STORM**

 

Outside their apartment, the weather got worse. A downpour began and the wind picked up, blowing so hard that Mireille slipped into a pair of jeans and went to close the windows. She insisted that Kirika change out of her soaked clothes and take her much-delayed shower.

By the time Kirika emerged, supper was laid out on the table and the wine she'd risked pneumonia for was being poured into two glasses. Which was good, because a part of Kirika was still reeling from Mireille’s demand. Though she had instigated this night, she'd never expected this outcome.

The women ate slowly, lingering over hot onion soup and _boeuf a la mode_ that offered a good counterpoint to the increasingly chilly weather. Their conversation steered carefully along safe topics, and it was only midway through the meal that Kirika realized that they were _both_ playing for time. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who dreaded what was to follow...

To her relief, Kirika learned that there were no contracts while she was gone, nor were there plans to resurrect Noir. Instead, Mireille talked about the security consulting job that had practically dropped into her lap, and how the Bouquet family’s funds – the bulk of which they'd left behind when she and her uncle fled Corsica – had suddenly become accessible.

“So you see, if you do want to go to college it’s not so hard anymore,” Mireille explained.

Kirika chewed as she mulled over their literal change in fortune. “The Soldats?” **  
**

Mireille nodded. “Breffort’s hand is all over this. It feels like a bribe or some kind of messed-up apology. Someone made a mistake when they tried to sanction me last year. I think it suits the current leaders for Noir to be, if not exactly on their side, at least inactive.”

"Maybe they still want you to join them."

"Us," the blonde corrected. "Remember, they wanted you too." She noticed a little shiver come upon Kirika, and berated herself for mentioning the touchy subject. “How about you?” she asked, switching topics. “Did anything interesting happen in Lyon?”

Kirika shrugged. “Nothing much,” she said between bites. “I stabbed a man once.”

Mireille nearly choked on her soup. “You what?! When?”

“Last year,” was the matter-of-fact reply. Kirika took a sip of wine. “I wanted to get to know the city and…I was bored,” she admitted sheepishly. “I went out after everyone was asleep and explored. On my way back, I saw a man and a woman in an alley. He had a knife to her throat and he was ripping her clothes. I hit him but he tried to fight back, so I grabbed the knife and stabbed him in the hand to keep him still. The woman ran but it's funny, she stopped to thank me first. Don’t worry,” she assured Mireille earnestly, “it was dark. Neither of them got a look at me.”

“Oh.” Mireille cleared her throat and continued to eat. “Well…good.”

They finished their meal, put away the leftovers, and washed and dried the dishes side by side with the ease of people who’d done the same exact thing dozens of times before. It was companionable and easy, and so much like old times that Kirika wished the moment would last forever. 

But of course time didn’t even slow, and when Kirika was done with the last dish and moved to put it away, she found Mireille already seated back at the table and nursing another glass of wine. _At least she liked what I picked out._ Kirika went to join her.

“Do you remember?” the blonde asked softly. There was no need to explain what she meant.

Kirika wished that she could say no and plead that this too was a part of her blurred recollection. There were portions of her life that were still blank, and more that she half-sensed were better forgotten. But this - no matter how she wished differently, since Chloe had given this memory back to her it was as clear as crystal in her mind.  “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

The quiet words were as unyielding a command as she had ever been given. Haltingly, Kirika obeyed.  


* * *

 

_…Her first memory was of metal. How cold and heavy the steel of the worn pistol, old before she’d even been born, felt in her tiny hands. Kirika’s steps carried her forward until she entered a large, ornate room, huge and opulent to her child’s eyes.  
_

_A well-dressed couple sat at the table. They were a strange pair: the man brawny and grim-looking though he made an effort to smile, the woman delicate and graciously aristocratic in bearing, a lady in every sense of the word. They chatted while their son quietly read a book from the floor. The man checked his watch. A startlingly clear, chime-like melody played as he snapped it open.  
_

_The second he spotted Kirika, his expression changed. ‘_ He knows,’ _she understood at once. She raised the loaded gun. The man dropped the watch and lunged protectively towards his wife and son while trying to draw his weapon at the same time.  
_

_She shot him. He was the biggest threat in the room and it was a basic lesson drilled into her to neutralize the most dangerous element first. The heavy gun bucked twice in her small hands, and though the shots weren’t that clean, she was too close and well-trained to miss.  
_

_When the boy scrambled to his feet and began to cry and shout for help, he went next. This time the act was almost automatic. At least those shots were better, quicker.  
_

_Kirika sensed Chloe’s timid approach from somewhere behind her. They had both been sent for this, but Chloe was new and it wasn’t clear yet whether she’d make a good sapling. With Chloe at her back, Kirika allowed herself a moment’s respite. Her little girl’s arms were tiring from the effort it took to keep the heavy gun level, and her hands were beginning to ache from the kick of the successive shots. Altena was right to choose this smaller pistol for her even if she couldn’t quite handle it yet.  
_

_Then the lady – Kirika remembered that her name was Odette Bouquet – began to speak, and though Kirika tried to keep her expression impassive, she couldn’t help but listen. '_ After all, we’re not monsters.' _Hadn’t Altena said that?  
_

_Hadn’t Altena warned them that there would be targets such as this, who would show such beautifully human courage that Kirika would be tempted from her duty? This genteel woman, with her upswept blond hair, refined features and desolate eyes, knew death was imminent. But she was facing it with dignity and love for her daughter foremost. The least she deserved was Kirika’s respect.  
_

_“Take care of Mireille," she was saying. Kirika wasn’t sure who ‘Mireille’ was, but she guessed it was her daughter. "Both you and Mireille will face harsh trials in the future. Please lend her your strength.” The words flowed as kindly as if Odette Bouquet was speaking to a child and not to her family's killer. That she knew who'd sent Kirika was proven by her last words. "To be sure love can kill. But always remember, hate can never save.”  
_

_It was with some regret that Kirika took the woman’s life. This time she made sure it happened with a single, clean shot. It was the least she could do for such a brave lady. The little girls left quickly after, mere seconds before another door to the room opened, and another life irrevocably changed…_   


* * *

 

The more Kirika talked, the more Mireille felt as if the air was slowly being drained out of the room. At the back of her mind, she was aware that if she clutched the stem of her wine glass with an inch more of pressure, it would break. It was like being in a bubble where everything was hazy and muted. When she tried to move her hand, it was like pushing through syrup. 

Mireille too had killed. She had no romantic notions. When she couldn't help herself, she'd used that knowledge to try to piece her family's last moments together. But guessing was an entirely different thing from knowing. She didn't need to interpret the patterns of pooled blood and lifeless bodies anymore because Kirika had just painted a moving picture for her. Mireille knew what death looked like, the coppery stink of blood, the mess of spilled guts and offal. In the end, that was what her family was reduced to.

“They loved you.”

The quivering, wistful words dragged Mireille back to the present, to the girl who was resolutely avoiding her eyes. Kirika looked drawn, as if the telling had cost her.

Mireille did not – could not care. The old ache of her family’s death that she always carried sprung to new life and enveloped her. She didn't realize that tears were streaming down her face until she opened her mouth to speak and tasted the salt on her lips. "I was supposed to be there."

Kirika looked stunned. For some reason it had never occurred to her, that a few seconds might be all that had separated her and Mireille from a first meeting drenched in blood.

"I wasn't because I woke up late. That’s all." Mireille wanted to laugh but choked back a sob instead. To think that something so paltry was all that spelled the difference between life and death. "When Papa and Mama told us that we were going on a long vacation, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. I didn't get up on time. My brother teased me and called me a sleepyhead. If I had been on time, I would’ve been there when you came."

She angrily wiped at her tears. "But so what, right? Even if I’d been there, it's not like I could've stopped you. What were you, eight? And you already knew how to kill. Papa had guns but he kept them away from me. He said I was too young."  

It was too much to bear, and as often happens the pain morphed into something more bearable, a simmering hate towards everyone involved in the whole damn mess - at the Soldats and Altena for their meaningless power plays, at Kirika for being an exceptional weapon, and most especially at Mireille herself. ‘ _Why didn't they just give up on me?’_ she wanted to cry. Her parents had ruled Corsica as members of the Soldats. Surely they were aware of how ruthless the organization could be. Didn't they know that as young as she was, if Mireille had known the cost she would have chosen to go herself?

"What was it all for? To punish them because they fought for the weakest sapling?" she asked through gritted teeth. "And why my brother? He was a child, no threat to anybody."

"He was loud," Kirika's mournful tone belied the matter-of-fact reasoning of an assassin, "and he..." She hesitated.

"He saw you," Mireille finished grimly. "He saw you and Chloe." Suddenly she lashed out, "Did you do that often, kill children?"

Kirika's head reeled back as if she'd been slapped. It was a question she’d never thought to ask herself, and in truth she had no idea. "You never have?"

"I picked my assignments. Everyone I dealt with knew I had rules, lines I wouldn't cross."

"I don't know if there were other children," she answered as honestly as she could. "I never had a choice, only orders."

“And if I had been there?” Mireille probed.

Kirika’s recoiled from the question in horror. “I – I wouldn’t have!” But an inner voice answered differently – _You were trained to obey._

“Oh? And why not? All I knew back then were dolls and pretty dresses,” Mireille scoffed. “I would’ve been an easy target.”

“Please, don’t…”  _I might have. I had a gun, I could have. She was no match for me._

“I would’ve screamed,” the blonde persisted. Taken to its logical conclusion, why wouldn’t she have ended up the same way? “Louder than my brother, I would’ve screamed for help -”

“Don’t ask me this!” Kirika was nearly sobbing. An empty void yawned inside of her and she teetered on its edge. Years of barely remembered indoctrination beckoned to her. _Let go,_ it said _, retreat here where it's safe, where nothing hurts._  

She jumped to her feet, every instinct screaming flight in the face of something as intolerable and unthinkable as Mireille's death at her hands.  She fled towards the middle of the room and retreated towards the pool table, desperate for distance.

Mireille heard the entreaty but was too deep in her own nightmare to be deterred. She pushed her chair back and followed until she was standing toe to toe with the terrified girl. “I wouldn’t have given you a choice," she declared with certainty, "not with my family’s bodies lying at my feet.”

When Kirika tried to turn her head, Mireille grabbed her chin. Eyes of fragmented cerulean met a desperate gaze that gleamed with flecks of amber. Only then did Mireille realize what was happening to her partner. Noir was near.

_Maybe this is the way it should be._ “I would’ve grabbed my father’s gun,” she continued, relentless in her despair. “He didn’t want to teach me, but my uncle showed me how.” 

“Stop.” The plea was filled with tears, but under those tears, honey brown was giving way to an ever deepening red.

“Papa’s gun was a revolver. It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out.” Though Mireille released her hold, this time the narrowed eyes didn’t look away. She was aware that their weapons, newly cleaned and gleaming, lay on the pool table mere inches away.

“Mireille.”

_There._ The blonde assassin shivered. Even the way Kirika said her name was different, cold and sibilant, like a snake poised to strike. The last time she’d heard that voice, shots had rung out seeking her blood.

Outside, the storm intensified. Lightning crashed and a window blew open. The lights flickered.

In that instant, Mireille’s Walther was in her right hand, ready to fire with the pull of a trigger. “I would’ve hated you enough to try.”

Before the first word was out, Kirika, in a reflex as automatic to her as breathing, seized her weapon on the table. The Beretta slipped into her hand naturally, as familiar an extension to her arm as her own fingers. She snapped the slide to readiness and raised it.

_She’s so good._ Mireille’s smile was sadder than tears. “Fight me.”

The booming sound of thunder filled the room. The lights flickered again, then completely blacked out as both women stood in their silent tableau, with their guns aimed point-blank at each other.

Mireille's heart pounded rapidly in her ears. Her finger tightened imperceptibly on the trigger, ready at any sign from Kirika to squeeze. But neither woman moved as the next jagged bolt of lightning flashed and emergency lights from a nearby building sputtered to life, illuminating the room with an eerie glow.

“You would’ve lost.” The shadow of Noir shaded every inch of Kirika, from her slitted, crimson gaze to the steady extension of her weapon and her nearly predatory stance.

“Only after you killed me,” Mireille replied with equal cool.

A single shake of the head. “You were a sapling. You weren't a part of my orders. I would’ve taken you, wounded you at the most.”

“Don’t pretend it wouldn’t have ended up the same!” Mireille countered bitterly. “One day we would’ve fought at the ritual. Noir only required two maidens, remember? Chloe was pretty sure that it was meant to be the two of you.”

“Chloe…” For a second there was a flicker of regret in the way Kirika said the girl's name. _So young, so needlessly lost._ Then she straightened and the moment passed. “Chloe never understood. She made herself into an implacable weapon. She was a mirror to my other self, her skills nearly a match to mine. But **I** was already that weapon. What could she have brought to Noir that I did not already?”

The sheer audacity of the callous statement took Mireille aback. "I’m sure that's not how Altena saw it."

"Altena’s only concern was Le Grand Retour," Kirika shrugged. “Chloe and I were like two swords, effective but always direct. But you - your family loved you, and that fact marks you even now. You move easily in the world. You’re comfortable in it, you live in the middle of a city. On your own, you created a network of contacts and became an assassin, but by ways that I can’t do or understand. I'm told who and where my target is. I don't pull up building plans, research sites, news and hack into social media profiles,” she recited Mireille's methodology with a precision borne of familiarity. “Even Altena would’ve seen that eventually." Her mouth curved in a taunting smile. "There's a reason why you were chosen to be the sapling set loose on the world. You're not an innocent."

Mireille seethed with the urge to slap her. "I never claimed to be innocent! But what options did you and Altena leave me, the surviving orphan of a Corsican mob boss? When people were hunting me down?"

"You could've run. Others have," Kirika observed caustically. “In the end, you chose to be a killer. Oh Mireille, if we had truly become Noir…” She closed her eyes briefly and let herself sink into that world. “We would’ve been partners in every sense of the word. I would’ve been sister, friend and lover to you, a sinner and murderer with the blackest of hands by your side. To the end.”

If Mireille was shaken by the unerring logic, she did not show it. “But that's not where we are now."

"No," Kirika agreed softly. "Which is why all I can do is offer.”

She moved forward until the end of Mireille's gun rested squarely against her chest. Kirika didn’t show the slightest fear as she lowered the Beretta until it lay uselessly by her side.  “For the last time, I’m offering you my death. I am not the other side of Noir to you. I’m not the Soldats’ nor anyone else’s weapon…except yours. I cannot atone. But if you don’t fulfill our promise now, that is how I will try.”

Cerulean eyes flickered to her in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I am Noir in all the ways that matter. Fulfill our promise and finish me...or use me for your vengeance. Unleash me against the Soldats."

When Mireille did not speak or otherwise react, Kirika tightened her grasp on her Beretta. _Eight,_ it came to her immediately, seven in the clip and one chambered at all times. "Or would you prefer...?"

_Maybe there is another way I can atone._ The thought was merely half-formed, her gun hand only starting to rise towards her head, when Mireille, in one smooth, blindingly fast motion, dropped her own gun and snatched Kirika's pistol away.

"You will never again use this to hurt anyone that I love!" Mireille was marble-pale and hard-eyed in the dim light, a goddess who was the epitome of rage. The Beretta seemed to disintegrate in her capable hands. It was field-stripped in seconds, the parts flung away with contempt. "What the hell, Kirika?!"

But Kirika was lost again, this time in the past. ' _Despair is not achieved through unrelenting pain.'_ Was this voice Altena's or did it belong to another? ' _Human beings can be strong. Expose them to suffering and somehow they'll adapt. But if you want to break a person, grant them a moment of happiness._ _It will provide a framework for their suffering and suddenly it will all  seem unbearable...'  
_

What had Mireille said? _'Haven’t you learned by now that love is the most dangerous thing in the world?'_ Was this what she'd meant?  That, having tasted love, Kirika could no longer imagine a world without it? She did not want to live in a world where Mireille hated her.

"I don't know what to do anymore," Kirika whispered as the amber gradually faded from her eyes. The dark void inside her receded, and once more she was just herself, and hurting. She was so tired. "I just want to make things easier for you."

"By offering me a weapon?!" Mireille took refuge in her fury as she tried to struggle past the fear that was thudding through her veins. _Had Kirika really been about to...?_ "Or stealing a vengeance that's rightfully mine?"

“Then what do you want?” Kirika clenched her empty fists. “I wish I could take everything back. You had a family that loved you, and I took that away. I deserve -”

"Shut up!" Mireille grabbed the girl angrily until their bodies were inches apart. "You want to know what I want? I want you to stop questioning why I didn’t shoot you that night. Stop telling me that’s what you deserve! This is hard enough without that. I know what I owe to my parents, who loved me enough to defy the Soldats, and to my brother, who didn't even get to live.” She wiped clumsily at the tears that sprung to her eyes again. “I know what I’ve vowed and what I’m supposed to do. But I can’t! Above all, stop offering me your fucking death! It’s not your death I want!”

Kirika was speechless. She touched a tear falling down Mireille's cheek with reverence. ' _Is she  weeping for me?'_ she wondered in disbelief. This time the memory that came to her was one she owned from the start: her readiness to follow Altena to a fiery death and Mireille's utter refusal to let her go. Those same blue eyes were crying for her back then too. _'I'm begging you, Kirika.'_

Kirika threw her arms tightly around the blonde. She buried her face in Mireille's shoulder because she still couldn't meet her eyes. There was nothing she could do to atone. There was nothing she could do to earn forgiveness. _But, nevertheless -_

"Forgive me."

She felt Mireille's surprise as she begged, "I don't deserve it but maybe someday...if you can find it in your heart…" This time the tears flowing were hers. "Please forgive me." _  
_

It seemed like an eternity before Mireille returned the embrace with the slightest pressure. "All I want,” she sighed, “is to be able to explain. One day, if there is an afterlife, I'll have to face my parents and my brother and explain to them why I failed. Why I couldn’t do my duty and avenge them.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “How do I do that, Kirika? How do I tell them why I…feel for you the way I do?”

"I don't know," Kirika replied softly. "But if that day comes, they can do what they like to me. I'll be by your side. I’ll stand with you."

"Oh? You want to stand with me? As what?" Mireille made an attempt to sound amused but they both knew she was utterly serious.

Kirika raised her head and met the questioning eyes blue eyes gravely. "If you’ll let me…as sinner, lover and friend. To the end of our days."

Mireille took a deep breath. The first time she had made a conscious decision to save Kirika's life – not just to let her live, but to rescue her – it had resulted in the deaths of a dozen men. That was when she knew: the thread of fate that bound them together was sure to be black. _A pitch-black thread, blacker than darkness._

She pulled Kirika close and held her. _So be it._

 


	6. Sinners

**6:  SINNERS**

 

The women didn't mention the revelations of that stormy night in the days that followed. The wounds opened by Kirika's story were too raw and jagged to be touched so soon.

Instead, they concentrated on regaining the sense of normalcy that they'd found only with each other. Kirika agreed to go to university in Paris or nearby. Mireille allowed herself a covert smile at the rapt expression on Kirika's face on her first campus tour. It didn't take much to see that school answered a need inside Kirika, even as the "usefulness" of some of the subjects continued to elude her.

Tokyo was not mentioned again. Neither were dorms. They agreed that it made better tactical sense to stay together in case the Soldats sent their knights again. No one tried to expound on the tactical advantage of continuing to sleep in the same bed, or why they now tended to fall asleep with arms draped loosely around each other.

At times they would talk drowsily before sleeping, like when they discussed Kirika's next firearm. Maybe the aged Beretta wasn't the same gun that was used to kill the Bouquet family but even the slightest chance wasn't worth taking.

“We could get another Beretta if you want.” Mireille's tone verged on boredom, to show that it didn't matter. "They don't make that model anymore but there are plenty secondhand."

Kirika shook her head. Another M1934 would serve only as a reminder. “Let's look at the newer models, with a double action this time,” she replied breezily, to demonstrate that the discussion was of little consequence. And really, the sad truth was with her training almost any object could be turned into a weapon. “I’d still like something that’s mostly steel though.”

“Oh sure. Because God forbid you have a weapon that’s younger than you for once,” Mireille scoffed, rolling her eyes. It was a joke of course; there were plenty of steel frame guns out there. But it was constantly amusing to Mireille that despite her youth, Kirika's preferences tended to be so much more traditional than hers. "They do make some with aluminum frames now, you know."

“You can make fun of it all you want,” Kirika sniffed, “but I blocked a sword with that gun. Good luck doing that with these newfangled polymers you like so much.”

"'Newfangled?'" Mireille teased. She'd never heard a person under fifty use that expression. "Is that a college word?"

"Oh shut up." But Kirika was grinning when she pushed her growing collection of college brochures off the bed and scooted closer to Mireille.

On another day, a trip to the shops yielded a book for Kirika instead of colors, pens and sketchpads. When Mireille saw the slim volume of poetry her eyebrows shot up. She knew who Pablo Neruda was but _...Kirika?! The same girl who treated fiction with such disdain? When did that happen?_

"We studied them in school," Kirika mumbled defensively as she caught the arched brow.

"Oh?" Mireille stirred her tea and savagely restrained the teasing quirk to her lips that threatened to blossom into a full-blown laugh. "I've come across his work a couple of times but I don't remember them anymore. Read to me?"

It was only when she caught the flush on Kirika's cheeks that Mireille began to suspect that there was something more to this sudden liking for verse. Honey brown eyes flickered shyly towards her and away as the soft voice began to recite. Kirika scarcely needed to look at the page.

> "I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz,  
>  or arrow of carnations that propagate fire..."

_Oh Kirika._ Mireille bent her head, inexplicably moved. _After everything we've been through, how can you commit to this so unconditionally?_

But maybe that was it - Kirika's heart was young in ways that Mireille's wasn't. Kirika was standing on the verge of the first relationship she'd freely chosen, ready and willing to jump in. While Mireille's upbringing hadn't been as austere, still what that life had taught her was that love was only one step away from loss and pain.

When Kirika finished and fell silent, Mireille knew that a response was expected. But what could she say? Where Kirika was just beginning to discover the wonder of a love that was given for no other price than to be herself, Mireille's heart was scarred by the loss of love freely granted, only to be snatched away time and time again. _Different pain, different scars._

Even now Mireille couldn't explain how she survived the deep, nearly physical ache of her family's loss those first months. Then other deaths had followed, of friends and colleagues, a lover or two, all caught in the Soldats' deadly web. By her early twenties, Mireille had walked into numerous rooms where the few people she'd allowed herself to care for lay in bloody splatters. Unlike Kirika, Mireille had never developed that talent of retreating inside so deeply that nothing mattered. Each death hurt.

Still Kirika's silent expectation drove Mireille to her feet. She returned with a slim volume, flipped through several well-thumbed pages, and began to read: 

> "Lock the door. In the dark journey of our night  
>  two childhoods stand in the corner of the bedroom  
>  watching the way we take each other to bits  
>  to stare at our heart…"

Mireille sneaked a glance at Kirika's face as she continued. _Did she get it?_ This wasn't about them, but it contained pieces of truth that Mireille could not yet put into her own words.

> "...A coin falls from the bedside table,  
>  spinning its heads and tails. How the hell  
>  can I win. How can I lose. Tell me again."

This poem wasn't like Neruda's, who had lived half a century past. These were the frank, sometimes cutting verses of a person who lived in the here and now, a poet who was also a woman who loved women, with all of the consequences such a love implied.

> "…Love won't give in. It makes a hired room tremble  
>  with the pity of bells, a cigarette smoke itself  
>  next to a full glass of wine, time ache  
>  into space, space, wants no more talk. Now  
>  it has me where I want me, now you, you do..."

Kirika traced the cover of the book when Mireille put it down. "Who's Carol Ann Duffy?"

"What kind of program do they have in that school of yours?" Mireille asked with pretended dismay. "They taught you poetry but left out the first woman to become a British poet laureate in over 300 years?"

Kirika only shook her head. She was learning that the blonde enjoyed teasing her. "Mireille?"

"Hmm?"

"Is it okay...I mean..." Kirika blushed as she leaned forward. Slowly, so Mireille had every opportunity to back away, she brushed her fingers against that fair face. "May I kiss you?"

Mireille sank into warm brown eyes that were alight with feelings. Love was dangerous - hadn't she told Kirika that? In their world, it was something they would have to fight to have and to keep. Mireille's heart was too scarred not to acknowledge that, but... _'Love won't give in.'_ Her heart was beating fast as she took Kirika's hands, entwined their fingers, and pulled her close. She allowed herself to hope. "Any time you want to."

At times they managed to sound like any other pair of young women trying to figure out what to do with their lives. In reality, they were two damaged people dancing in the dark, blindly groping their way to their own version of normal.

 

* * *

 

*** **_Weeks later_** ***

 

"My ride's here. See you tomorrow!" Kirika waved goodbye to her friends as she ran towards a compact, late '70s red convertible. She tried not to wince as both the car and its driver garnered their share of admiring looks. _Of course Mireille would pick red_ , she wanted to groan _. Obviously she's not from the assassins' school of subtlety._

Mireille steered away from the curb as soon as Kirika buckled in. "Good day?"

"So - so." The cheerful demeanor evaporated almost instantly. It was replaced by something faintly pensive.

Mireille waited. It was funny in a way. Kirika used to be such an enigma to her; now she could read the signals even of her silences. _Which is a good thing, considering how taciturn she can be._

They had time. The small university Kirika had finally chosen was located outside the city. Even then it wasn't till they were halfway home, on a quiet road laid down between stretches of woods, that Kirika broke the silence. "My friend Jae, remember her?"

"Hmm?" Mireille vaguely recalled a tall redhead who seemed to like black a lot. "Wasn't she back there earlier?"  

"Yeah." Kirika clasped her hands in her lap and firmly kept her gaze straight ahead. "She asked if she could have your number." _And like a fool, instead of threatening her with a slow, painful death, here I am telling you._

Mireille kept her attention on the road. The kisses after their exchange of poetry had been steadily followed by other kisses on other nights. And while their passion was growing, still they'd both carefully steered clear of any more discussions about what was happening. As with other times, they had simply gone on with their lives. _But maybe it **was** time to talk about it_. And Mireille found, to her surprise, that she was ready. "What did you tell her?"

"Nothing, something else came up. But she'll ask again."

"And when she does?"

"I want to say no." Kirika clenched her fists. _I want to tell her that you're mine._ "But -" But they had never defined what this was. The books and TV shows called what they were doing dating, and the making out was getting to that point, Kirika knew, when neither of them would be able to turn back. She was content to let Mireille set the pace, aware that between the two of them it was Mireille who harbored more misgivings. But a part of her also yearned to know where her place was in Mireille's life.

"Then say no." Sensing her companion's distress, Mireille smoothly pulled over to the side of the road. "I'm not interested in anybody's number, Kirika," she declared, turning to face the girl. "I’m not interested...in anyone else.” A smile tugged at her lips. "I doubt I'll ever be."

"Mireille?" Kirika swallowed as a wild, hungry hope flared in her chest. "Does that mean...?" She leaned towards the woman who held her heart.

Then she blinked, her eyes flitting for an instant to the space behind Mireille's right. A nondescript, black sedan was pulling up next to them. _In the middle of a practically deserted road._ Heavily tinted windows whirred down.

The telltale sound and the look on Kirika's face was all the warning Mireille needed. She was already diving for the gun strapped to the underside of her seat when Kirika shouted, "Down!"

But Kirika was faster still. Her new, untraceable CZ 75 Compact was already out of her bag, raised and shooting before the first stubby muzzle of a submachine gun emerged from the sedan to spit rounds of deadly fire. The short muzzle jerked back as one of Kirika's shots found a target. Suddenly the other car was skidding to a stop and the men inside it were shouting.

Head low, Mireille took advantage of the confusion to punch the convertible into gear. Bullets flew around them but they were haphazard, poorly aimed at a moving target. Just the same she fired behind her without looking. With luck she'd hit something.

"Three men, two with HKs, not sure about the driver. One wounded, but not dead," Kirika pronounced as she slapped another magazine into her gun.

"If they follow, we take them!" Mireille hissed as she gunned their car forward.

Kirika didn't answer, didn't need to. She took Mireille's pistol and inserted a fresh clip, then made sure that all of their spare magazines were fully loaded. She shoved her spares into the deep pockets of her hoodie.

Mireille drove the car into a gap among the trees that dotted the road. She'd gone over this and every alternative route to Kirika's school dozens of times; she knew where every useful turn was. The second they were deep enough for the trees to provide a modicum of cover, she pulled on the wheel hard. The convertible skidded to a halt at an angle.

The women leapt out of the car. "Go!" Mireille told Kirika. No more words were necessary. It was as if the intervening years had never happened. They were a team. Altena had been right about one thing, they were so close that they moved as one.

Mireille crouched behind the convertible as Kirika sped off. As a precaution, she kept the engine block between her and the road as she checked her gun and spares a last time.

In the silence it was the engine that she heard first, whining in a low gear. Though it was quickly getting dark, the sedan's headlights were off. _So these men weren't complete amateurs._ The sedan moved slowly; with no lights and the trees it had no choice. But Mireille knew that it meant Kirika and she had been seen or at least suspected of ducking into the woods; there was no reason for this painstaking search otherwise. Her grip on her Walther tightened as the sedan came into view, a noisy, blacker outline on the road. It had trouble spotting the red convertible because as eye-catching as the color was in the sunlight, the shade Mireille had chosen melded into the shadows when it was dark. They were nearly directly across from her before they stopped.

Mireille ducked as a blast of automatic fire blistered the convertible and the surrounding trees. She traded a few shots but with only a pistol she was clearly outgunned, a sitting duck. A smirk touched her lips. _Perfect._

In the barrage of spitfire flashes and noise, the men didn't notice Kirika emerging from the woods on the other side of the road. Her body sang with adrenaline as she ran. It had been so long since it had been like this, since life was reduced to a few seconds of do or die, and everything that she was moved with such clarity and purpose.She leapt, her body like a well-oiled machine put through its paces. Only the thud of her solid landing on the sedan's trunk alerted the men in the car. By the time they began to swing their guns in her direction, she was on the roof.

Methodically, she fired down through the thin metal sheeting. _Passenger, back seat, driver -_ two lightning-quick pulls on the trigger for each location. The fourteen rounds in her new pistol gave her more options, and with each shout or scream came another, more accurately placed round. It wasn't a sure thing because even with her keen senses Kirika was still shooting blind, but by this point Mireille was up and approaching. Her bullets flew through the open windows and took care of the rest.

In seconds, everything was still. Only then did Kirika relax and let the gun fall to her side. There would be no survivors, which was a pity, because they could've used the information.

"Kirika."

She was mesmerized by the punctured metal at her feet. If there were more light, she would be able to see through the holes and gain a glimpse of the damage.

"Kirika!"

Mireille suppressed a shiver as slitted, amber-hued eyes slid towards her. _Noir, already?_ She had seen Kirika lapse into this narrowed, hyper-aware state during a gunfight before, but the odds and casualties back then had been horrendous compared to this. _Why did it take so little to push her now?_ She transferred her gaze to the riddled sedan, feigning an equanimity she didn't feel. "Ugh, what a mess. Should we even try to move it off the road?"

Cat-like, Kirika somersaulted off of the vehicle and landed in a silent crouch beside her. "Leave it," she said, more coldly than Mireille had ever heard her speak. "Let them see what happens when they come after us."

Kirika lapsed into silence after that. She was a voiceless, ominous shadow by Mireille's side the entire way back. When they arrived at an underground garage at the edge of the city, all she did was stand back as Mireille and her contact discussed the merits of possibly restoring the car, or getting rid of it completely. She learned that the older sports car, made at a time when solid metal bodies were the norm, already had reinforced door panels. Again, Mireille's choices proved to be more subtle than they appeared.

Kirika was glad her partner had such foresight, but when she saw the bullet holes that ran the entire length of the driver's side, all she felt was rage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems that Kirika and Mireille read are excerpts from Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII" (English translation) and from Carol Ann Duffy's "Close." In 2009, Carol Ann Duffy became the first woman - and first openly gay woman - to be appointed as the UK's poet laureate.


	7. Lovers and Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more, this fic is rated "M" for a reason (I'm sure you can guess why by the title ;) ).

 

**7: LOVERS AND FRIENDS  
**

The two women were exhausted by the time they arrived home. They dumped their things by the door. Mireille glanced at her grimly quiet partner, and waved her to the shower first.

Kirika made the water as hot as she could stand. Trace evidence aside, most ammo still contained lead, but those weren't the reasons why she scrubbed until her skin was red. She didn't spot any blood on her clothes or body, but her hands felt heavy with it. She said nothing when she finished, passing Mireille in silence as the blonde made her way to the bathroom.

She went to the window and welcomed the wind that swept in when she opened it, even though the coolness of it made her shiver in her spaghetti strap cami top and sleep shorts. How often had she stood here, taking in the scenes and sounds of a city, wishing and searching for something she couldn't even name back then? And now, just when everything she wanted seemed within reach, how like fate to lash out and try to snatch it away. One day, she would find who was responsible. _Then they will all die._

Behind her, she heard the bathroom door open, heard Mireille padding on bare feet around the flat. She half-expected a summons to turn in, but Mireille was switching off the lights instead, until there was only a single lamp left by the bed. In that muted glow, the stars and the city lights outside seemed brighter.

Then Mireille was standing behind her and, like in one of Kirika's daydreams, she was slipping her arms around Kirika and urging her to lean back a little. Kirika sighed as she allowed her body to settle against the warm figure.

"Not too chilly with the window open?" Mireille was so close, her lips brushed against the shell of Kirika's ear.

"No." Kirika turned her head, and met the blonde in a light kiss. "Right now it's perfect." Just like that, the deadened rage inside of her began to recede. Not that it was gone entirely, but it wasn't the only thing that was in her anymore. How could it, when she was home, and in Mireille's arms, and the night sky was clear and vivid outside their window?

A minute passed before Mireille asked, "Why the roof, Kirika?"

Kirika shut her eyes. The question was non-confrontational and quietly delivered, but it let her know that she was a fool, if she thought that Mireille hadn't noticed her disquiet or how Noir had come upon her. "It was a new car." New in comparison to the cars that Mireille favored, anyway. "The windshield was tempered, and it had heavily tinted windows, maybe side impact beams. The roof was just a sheet of aluminum and padding," she explained. "They didn't expect it, and I had FMJ's."

"That would've worked fine on the windows," Mireille observed neutrally. Full metal jacket bullets were notoriously penetrative. They tended to punch through things and keep on flying.

Kirika nodded. "Sure, through the windows, and maybe through the men, too. You were on the other side."

"And was it the quickest way? The most efficient?"

"Yes!"

"Really?" Mireille remained calm but her words took on an edge. "When we first met, would you have done the same? Or would you have shot through the windows, and trusted me to get out of the way?"

"I'm not going to apologize for putting you in less danger, Mireille!" In her mind, Kirika heard the thud of bullets again, replayed the split second by which they had ducked the onslaught. "I could've lost you!"

"But you didn't. I'm here," Mireille pointed out softly, "and so are you. It's alright, we made it. But do you see now, why love is so very dangerous for us?"

Like a slow-moving arrow, the remonstration pierced through the protective shell of Kirika's anger. Her eyes stung with frustration. "Why can't they leave us alone?! All I want is an ordinary life with you."

Mireille's arms tightened around her. As much as her heart ached, she would not lie to Kirika. "We may never have that."

"But that's not fair!" Kirika rarely dwelled on the life snatched away from her, but right now all she could think of was that she was owed, goddammit! "If the Soldats hadn't taken me, I'd be just another student, and maybe you would've had a normal life too. Why can't we have that?"

"Because we've killed." Mireille's reply was succinct and completely devoid of self-pity. "It doesn't matter if we tried to choose our targets, if we did it for the right or wrong reasons, under orders, or for profit or survival. In the end, taking a life has consequences. For as long as we stay together -"

"Don't say that!" Kirika angrily wiped at her eyes. "After today, do you still think we'd be safer apart?"

"No."

Suddenly the arms around her withdrew, and Kirika nearly stumbled at the loss of support. She whirled around, ready for an argument, only to find that Mireille had taken just that one step back, and that they were standing face to face, with scant inches between them. Her eyes went wide as she got a good look at Mireille for the first time.

The blonde was wearing one of her oversized white shirts and little else, leaving her long, lean legs bare. Silky hair fell in wavy tresses that dampened the otherwise pristine shirt. But it was the intent expression on Mireille's face that took Kirika's breath away. Tonight, the blue eyes were far from cool and distant. They were searing, like twin points of sapphire fire.

Whatever protestations Kirika intended were silenced by a thumb placed lightly on her lips. It softly traced the outline of her mouth, while another hand and fingers ran along her jaw, and lifted her head until she was looking deeply into those burning eyes.

"Today, I nearly lost you too, Kirika. I...oh hell, just tell me if you don't want this!" Mireille rasped, before she pulled the girl into a kiss.

It was the first kiss Mireille had initiated in three years. Even during the past weeks, she had always waited for Kirika's approach. For that reason alone, the kiss was startling. But the possessive way that Mireille kissed her this time - the strong arms that firmly molded their bodies together, the lips that slanted demandingly across hers, the exploring, insistent hands - all combined to block out the Paris skyline, the ambient noise of a city, everything but the woman who held Kirika captive.

And Mireille knew what she was doing. Her full, cupid-shaped mouth alternately teased and demanded, enticing Kirika with unspoken promises of pleasure. Mireille captured her bottom lip and raked the plump flesh with the edge of her teeth, before laving it soothingly with soft passes of her tongue. When that tongue pushed in to explore the warmth of Kirika's mouth and unerringly found its mate, Kirika whimpered, opening more in a breathless signal of invitation.

By the time they drew apart for breath, Kirika's heart was racing. And then it nearly, abruptly ground to a halt, because Mireille was unfastening the buttons on her blouse. It was Mireille who brought the girl's frozen hands into the white folds of cloth, Mireille who hissed when Kirika bared her breasts, and training-roughened palms discovered the sensitive pink nipples for the first time.

Holding Kirika's enthralled gaze, Mireille took the ends of the shirt and slipped it off her body. Under the garment, only a pale blue strip of silk was left for cover. Mireille simply stood for a moment, feeling slightly self-conscious as she intentionally displayed herself to Kirika. But when Kirika's expression shifted from a kind of awe to desperate craving, she basked in that hungry stare. She didn't miss the way it raked over her breasts, the nipples already taut from Kirika's touch.

"No Noir in our bed." Mireille laid down her terms with a warning and a plea wrapped in the same words. "At least, not tonight, not...for the first time."

 _The first time?_ Kirika swallowed _._ There was only one possible answer. "Every night," she promised. Noir rendered her an automaton good only for killing; it had no place in this. She could barely believe that this was happening, that the figure she had desired for years was bared to her and open to her touch. Those fair and proud shoulders, the lightly defined arms and womanly hips, the temptation of those generous breasts - everywhere she touched sent sparks shooting up into her own body.

The relentlessly slow exploration was driving Mireille crazy. She caught the wandering hands and tugged Kirika forward, directing their steps until the bed was behind the girl. She pushed lightly on her shoulders until Kirika was sitting on the bed and looking up at her with luminous, heavy-lidded eyes. Mireille straddled her lap and found Kirika's mouth again, only this kiss wasn't possessive. This time, the soft slide of Mireille's lips evoked the tenderness of another night, when Kirika had woken in inexplicable fear and Mireille had taken her in her arms.

It felt like their first kiss, with none of the hesitation.

"If this makes you uncomfortable...I mean, if at any point you want to stop..." Mireille shivered as Kirika trailed kisses down her neck. She wanted to be the most patient lover in the world. But it was as if all her desire for this woman was set loose, and there was simply no way to cage it again.

Kirika laughed weakly. Considering the way her lap was currently occupied, did Mireille really think that was a possibility? "I'm only afraid you will," she confessed.

"Oh?" Mireille's eyes danced with teasing lights at the admission. "I wonder how I can reassure you otherwise," she said, running an appreciative hand down the lithe torso, feeling muscles jump reflexively beneath her fingers. "Kirika, you should know..."

"Y-yes?" Kirika wondered how such simple touches could play havoc on her breathing.

"...you were wrong. When you said I didn't need anyone," Mireille clarified. She looked searchingly at Kirika's face, and found no guilt, no Noir, only the deep feeling of one woman for another.

Kirika couldn't believe what she was hearing. More than anything, she knew that Mireille prided herself on her self-sufficiency, on the fact that she had survived mostly on her own since her family's murder. _So it was impossible that she would -_

"I need you." The simple admission shook them both. An assassin didn't need, not if she wanted to stay alive and sane. To rely on such a chancy presumption as one person's continued presence in a life like theirs was beyond foolish. But Mireille, who had already experienced those losses, was choosing to let that go. She had to, to be with Kirika _._ Silently, she begged for her family's forgiveness because as much as she'd tried, she could no longer continue straddling the thin line between the demands of filial vengeance and her equally strong feelings for Kirika. She could not make love to this woman and pretend that it meant less.

"Oh Mireille, I..." Overcome, Kirika embraced the woman tightly. She had dreamed of forgiveness, but this was so much more. For her, Mireille was saying, she would dare to hope.

She would've said more, but Mireille leaned down and kissed her again. She flicked her tongue in long strokes against Kirika's, stoking her desire until she heard the telltale whimper again. If there was one thing she'd learned over these past weeks, it was that the stoic assassin could not hide her passion once they passed a certain point. That loss of control never failed to set Mireille's blood on fire.

"Let me see you?" she breathed into Kirika's ear. She caught the lobe lightly between her teeth while her hand skimmed the curve of a breast under the cami top. She watched the flush that traveled up Kirika's neck as the nipple strained against her palm.

Kirika bit her lip as the hand strayed down to the waistband of her shorts and tugged the ribbon loose there. She nodded nervously and lay back on the bed, lifting her hips so the near-naked goddess could slip the shorts down her legs. Unconsciously, she shifted as Mireille's gaze swept avidly over her bare legs and cotton panties.

Mireille's hand arrested the shy movement. " _Tellement belle..._ "

Kirika blushed. Her, beautiful? The way people judged physical beauty had never mattered to her. In fact it was downright confusing how some people could prefer a silhouette so thin it left no strength in a woman's arms and legs. But Kirika had been around long enough to know that most girls didn't have the nicks and marks she did from the hundreds of scrapes she'd been through. Not even Mireille, who'd escaped Altena's training, had them to the extent Kirika did. It was silly, she knew. Mireille had seen her in shorts and sleepwear and less. She was familiar with all of Kirika's scars. But the way she was watching now, with the eyes of a lover, for a second Kirika just wished...

It was as if Mireille could read her denial. "Don't believe me? Look, my hands are shaking." She held them up with a self-deprecating laugh. She was so hungry for Kirika, the anticipation was very nearly killing her. "I can't wait to see all of you."

Kirika glanced down, and smiled. Mireille was exaggerating but it was true. She brought those unsteady hands to the hem of her shirt. "Then do it," she urged breathlessly.

But Mireille still possessed some patience. Slowly, she slid her hands under the thin top, watching Kirika carefully as her palms swept up, taking the cloth with it, baring skin that had always been covered until now. She caught her breath as small, firm breasts came into view for the first time. _Like chocolate, and just as delectable,_ Mireille thought deliriously as she took the dark, pebbled nipples into her mouth _._

Bliss almost on the verge of agony made Kirika's back arch when a pink tongue flicked in lightning-fast strokes around her nipples. Mireille did not stop until they were unbearably tight, until Kirika was trying to push more of her breast into Mireille's mouth.

When it was Kirika's turn, when she was able to pull Mireille up until those generous, rose-tipped breasts were poised over her, it seemed impossible to do anything but to suck them in. When she felt the nipples swell under her tongue, when she heard Mireille call out "Kirika!" in a helpless little moan when she tugged at them with the edge of her teeth, it stoked a fire in her, made her want to devour everything that was Mireille all over again. _To hear Mireille say my name like that again and again...sounds like a worthy life goal._

Then all thought fled as Mireille's hands wrapped around her legs, and parted them carefully. When she felt no hesitation, Mireille drove her thigh firmly against Kirika's center in the same moment she took rough possession of Kirika's mouth.

"Mireille!" The thin panties were a poor barrier to the play of muscles, to the constant, hard grind of that thigh against her center. Something deep inside Kirika began to blaze as her hips lifted to meet those thrusts.

Mireille tried to marshal her breath as her hands crumpled the sheets next to Kirika. "I don't want to stop," she admitted raggedly. "Do you...?"

"No!"

Eyes the color of molten chocolate tracked Mireille's slender hand as it moved over the last piece of cloth that covered Kirika. Mireille gently traced the folds outlined under the skimpy cotton until her fingers found the nub that made Kirika's heart pound. She passed the pad of her thumb over that protrusion repeatedly, in slow, circular motions, until Kirika's hips were rolling restlessly beneath her. "Let me touch you, Kirika? Please, without this?"

"Yes, but...you too?" Kirika pleaded huskily, eyeing the blue silk that tantalized her.

They stripped each other of that last article with hands somehow equally licentious and reverent. Afterwards, they sank down on the bed together, kissing and softly exploring, content for now to be simply entwined. No words could describe this moment, how intimate and right it felt for their bodies to touch without hindrance for the first time. How, after all these years, feelings and physical expression finally matched perfectly.

There were times when people could lie naked, and still be fully armored in all the ways that mattered, when sex was sex and, as good as it was, nothing more. And then there was the sex that was about connecting in the deepest possible way, and the nakedness of two people stood, too, for the fall of every barrier between them.

This, Kirika realized belatedly, was what Mireille meant when she said that love was dangerous. They were completely vulnerable as they lay together. From now on, she would be increasingly defenseless against Mireille. Love would change them in ways they could not foresee; as Mireille pointed out earlier, it had already started. But there was no other way to honor the depth of the bond between them, except to commit to it completely.

And then Mireille was poised over Kirika, laying soft, sucking kisses on her breasts, then her belly and thighs while nudging them apart so she could slip in between them. Kirika held her breath, feeling trepidation, and yet equally sure that she would die if Mireille stopped now.

Blue eyes locked tenderly with brown, and then Mireille's hands were on her. Fingers brushed through the triangle of soft curls at her center, and gently opened her up.

" _J'ai besoin de toi_ _,_ " Mireille murmured. _I need you_ , she was saying again, but the meaning was entirely different this time.

"Please." Kirika was hoarse with wanting. Then her head rocked back as a tongue speared through her folds, slicking broadly through the length of her slit. In achingly slow strokes, it repeatedly dipped at her entrance before sweeping up in swirling motions towards her clit. "Mireille!" Her lover was tender but merciless.

Mireille curled her tongue over the sensitive bundle of nerves. "So wet," she moaned. She held Kirika's hips in place with an iron grip as the girl began to thrash. She opened her further, desperate for every inch to be open to her sight and touch. Hungrily, she flayed Kirika with her tongue, dizzy with the taste of her. "So sweet. Dear God, Kirika..."

Kirika's hand fisted in blond tresses as Mireille sealed her mouth over her clit and brought her higher and higher. "What are you doing to me?" she cried out. She bucked again, her body no longer completely under her control, but still Mireille's mouth continued its assault. "I can't...so close...oh please!" she gasped, unable to articulate what she needed, every sense focused only on what Mireille was doing.

She felt one of Mireille's hands leave her hip, and the very tip of a slender finger circle the entrance at her core. "Oh yes. _Je te veux_ , Mireille," Kirika whispered, pressing Mireille's hand tightly to her sex. _Oh how I want you._ Her body felt like it was poised on the edge of a precipice. Only, if it took this last step, she would not fall but sweep into the air in flight.

Then Mireille was next to her again. She brushed Kirika's hair from her face and kissed her softly as she slowly began to fill her, providing her an anchor for what came next. She was patient and careful, giving Kirika every chance to get used to the intrusion before beginning the slightest push and pull of their dance.

Mireille watched in awe as Kirika began to move to meet the thrust of her hand, as the girl beneath her unraveled and gave herself up to their passion. "Yes, just like that," she whispered as her thumb found the swollen, sensitive clit again. She flicked it, swallowing Kirika's moans with a kiss before beginning the slow, agonizing slide with her fingers that would completely undo her lover. "Come for me."

"Mireille...!" Then Kirika was crying out and quaking beneath her. Still Mireille wouldn't stop. Kirika was so wet and open, and strong. She could take more. She curled two fingers inside Kirika and pressed firmly on her clit until the pulsing spasms took her again. She wrung out every bit of pleasure until Kirika collapsed against her.

By the end of it, the girl who'd once forged through a mountain and forests for days had no strength left. After a few breaths, Kirika made a weak motion to get up. A light hand on her shoulder barely had to exert any pressure to stop her.

"Later." Mireille was smiling at her with tender affection. "Give yourself a minute."

"A minute," Kirika declared firmly, as her eyes fluttered shut.

"Umm-hmm," Mireille agreed. She snuggled closer, snagged a blanket and drew it over them. They fell asleep with Mireille's head pillowed on Kirika's shoulder. There were no nightmares or restlessness then, just peace and sweet oblivion.

Much later, when they woke, Kirika knew that when Mireille opened herself to her, when she let Kirika take her, and showed her how she liked to be touched so that she, too, was utterly undone at the very end, that this was about more than reciprocation. They were assassins, and this too was a weapon. But freely given this way, it was also the best way they had of showing love.

In the aftermath, Kirika rested her head happily, and tiredly, on Mireille's stomach. _She's mine now._

But then she glanced up, and saw those blue eyes glittering down at her again. She gulped as Mireille's hand wrapped around wrist meaningfully and pulled her up. _Or maybe I'm hers._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your feedback, kudos and patience. This is really late coming in. I apologize, I keep forgetting how much life and work can throw in your way when you're supposed to be writing. It turns out the muse can't be pushed when a hundred other things are going on. :P Thanks to xxmadlaxx who gave excellent beta-points on this chapter, and Sav for taking a look at an early version and providing the nifty French phrases.


End file.
